∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 7, column 1, continued:]
Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum”
TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC: —
In THE CRITIC of Sept. 22, 1888, you were kind enough to ask for me the name of the story by Poe in which a man was killed by the contracting walls of an iron cell. In asking the question, I remarked that this was the motive of a Blackwood story, whose name or author I could not remember. My question was answered on Sept. 29, a correspondent stating the story to be ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ The motive of this story is so striking that no one who has read it will forget it; and the genesis of so original an idea is worth knowing. The following passages from The Knickerbocker for Feb., 1850, may, therefore, interest some of your readers: — ‘The story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” is a theft and combination of two tales; one in Blackwood, under the title of “Vivenzio; or, Italian Vengeance,” and the other, a tragic scene by the German Hoffmann. From the Blackwood writer, Mr. Poe took the gradually decreasing dungeon, and from Hoffmann, the pendulum, pointed with an instrument of torture.’ The Knickerbocker writer is wrong as to the title of the Blackwood tale, the hero of which was Vivenzio, the tale itself being ‘The Iron Shroud.’ It appeared in Aug., 1830, and has been frequently reprinted. Can any one give the name of the story by Hoffmann?
W. M. G.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., June 21, 1890.
[The answer in our issue of Sept. 29, 1888, did not say that the man was killed by the contracting walls,’ but that he was rescued at the last moment from the terrible position in which the Inquisitors had placed him. — EDS. CRITIC.]
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
The original query to which this item is the final entry is as follows:
[The Critic, September 22, 1888, p. 145, col. 2:]
No. 1399. — On page 442, Vol. II., of ‘Battles and Leaders of the Civil War’ (Century Co.), Mrs. Harrison speaks of ‘the prisoner of the Inquisition in Poe's story, cast into a dungeon with slowly contracting walls.’ Will some reader of THE CRITIC tell me what story of Poe is referred to? This is not the plot of any Poe story which I remember, but it is the theme of a British tale published (in Blackwood's, I think) some forty years ago.
W. M. G.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
[The Critic, “Answers,” September 29, 1888, p. 159, col. 2:]
No. 1399. — The story written by Poe to which Mrs. Harrison doubtless refers, and the name of which ‘W. M. G.’ asks for, is entitled ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ It may be found in Widdleton's edition of Poe's works, Vol. I., p. 310. The contraction of the red-hot walls of the prison-chamber forcing the prisoner to a yawning abyss in its centre is the last torture to which he is subjected. But just as he is about to be precipitated into the abyss, the Deus ex machina intervenes. The French enter Toledo, the fiery walls rush back, and he is rescued from his awful fate by the hand of General Lasalle!
J. L. G
FAIRPORT, N. Y.
[This question is answered also by H. M.. Philadelphia, Pa.; J. H.. St. Denis, Md.; H. R. D., Rutland, Vt.; and M. G., and J. B.C., New York.]
Although all of these items refer to him only by his initials, it is certainly William McCrillis Griswold, the son of Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He worked as an indexer and bibliographer at the Library of Congress from 1882-1888, after which he moved to Cambridge, MA.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - CNY, 1890] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum (William M. Griswold, 1890)